Party on, dude

I had my first party in a long time today and it turned out to be a very different experience than the one I was expecting. See, I have this thing that I call "party anxiety" which I suppose is a remnant of the parties I used to go to when I was younger; as the party approaches I start getting afraid that I'm going to go and not have anyone to talk to and end up bored and miserable in a corner somewhere. Why I'm like this, I'm not sure - I can be really outgoing when I'm in the right situation, even with new people. I think it just becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy: I get nervous about being bored at a party, so when I go I'm nervous so I don't socialize and end up being bored at the party. I probably need to just loosen up, maybe take advantage of alcohol's value as a social lubricant, I don't know. Regardless, that's not the real point of this post.

When I started getting that feeling of dread once again I decided to look at this party a little differently; I made up my mind that I was going more as a writer than a guest. In most parties, there's little stories going on all around. This person talks to this person, this girl flirts with this guy who is oblivious to her advances, this woman gets a little too drunk and starts spewing forth with personal details no-one ever knew about her. All around there are little dramas going on which could be used as parts of a bigger story or even become stories in themselves. This is really the first time I decided to do something I don't normally so I could get more experiences to add to my writing and, to my surprise, I started really looking forward to the party and the rich material that awaited me there.

Naturally, it turned out to be a complete bust...at least for the writer side of me. The party itself was actually pretty nice. Our friend had a great time doing the "Halloween Thing", hiding himself as a prop to scare people coming in and even converting his small garage into this remarkably elaborate haunted house. There weren't too many people and the ones that I actually talked to turned out to be pretty cool. The food was great and plentiful, nobody got really drunk and there weren't any real awkward moments. Maybe this is the type of party that goes on once you get a little older. Or maybe we're just boring - something I don't mind all that much, as there are times that "boring" is not such a negative thing as it once was. The only unfortunate part to the whole affair is that my inner author left relatively unfulfilled.

Edit: Ouch, I just realized how dry and boring this whole entry was, which I think was the point. I'm discovering more and more how much I need to start experiencing new things...or if I can't do that, at least use some imagination to make things more interesting. But even with the time change it's too late tonight, so I'll have to think about this and write more bullshit later.